The European Library's Opening to Research Libraries

The European Library is approaching the end of its two-year project Europeana Libraries, by which it started to expand its membership from national libraries to include research libraries in Europe. As the project draws to a close, The European Library will start to put its business plan into action. The subscription model whereby the national libraries of Europe supported TEL by a membership fee has been expanded, with the structure simplified and the fees reduced to take account of an expected larger number of library members. Accompanying the revised subscription model is a comprehensive list of services that the new European Library offers to all members.

This is an opportunity for the research libraries of Europe to expose their metadata at the highest level. It will be visible in both The European Library portal and in Europeana, thus ensuring a wide audience of researchers and general public alike, who will be able to re-use the data in their own workflows. Membership of The European Library greatly benefits libraries too, as extra services are available to enrich members’ metadata and expose it again in other research environments.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.